Author: admin

But What Does That Really Mean?

The news is exhausting. Not just all the pain and stupidity. It’s that everything requires interpretation. Even if and when someone in public is being straightforward in their speech, we might be forgiven for suspecting they are not. We are not unjustified in assuming everything we are hearing is spin.

You may find you suffer from this same sort of fatigue from dissembling, obfuscation and manipulation at work as well. I sure hope not (been there, and it’s awful). We would pray and work at, for sure, not wanting this kind of experience among those we count as friends, and most certainly not family. But it happens.

We can at least all resolve to let what people experience in us be authentic. In another, I will take flaws, oddballness, even monumental screw-ups over interpersonal dishonesty or double-speak.

Jesus said, “Let your word be ‘Yes, Yes’ or ‘No, No’; anything more than this comes from the evil one” (Matthew 5:47 NRSV). People had debased the practice of oath taking by using it in an attempt to cover their insincerity and deceitfulness. Better to just speak plainly.

Save us, Lord, from spin narratives with one another. We see enough of it on the news. May we not devolve into a world where everyone has to guess about everyone else.

Collective Craving, Shared Hope

So as of this coming Friday, July 17, most of Ontario will enter Stage 3 of reopening, meaning, while still socially distanced, we can dine in restaurants, go to the gym, and more. Along with more practical reasons for happiness at this, there is probably an expel-a-long-breath sense of relief at being able to be a bit closer to other specimens of our species in something like a more everyday sort of way.

Maybe at some level there is a similar appeal, even craving, involved in a flurry of extra terrestrial connecting. Three nations are launching scientific missions to Mars this month (there’s a window for that now). And some of us are excited about comet Neowise, visible in the early morning sky.

If as a species we go to some lengths to explore possible proximity (relatively speaking) with other parts of the universe, it seems really not much of a big deal to do the very simple things that will help move along to being closer to one another again right here: You know, the distancing, masking, hand washing. How can any of this be an issue?

Some basic efforts about basic things are worthwhile, in all kinds of ways. I for one want to keep this in mind in a world where it easily can seem that only selfish, I-am-my-own-little-cosmos evil-influenced people succeed.

Mitigating Chaos

It’s easy enough to do. It is easy enough to fault powers-that-be for not being powers- that-do when it comes to being prepared for foreseeable trouble and acting on it. Not to excuse anything, but it is also true that the powers-that-be exhibit human geared-for-failure traits that we share. Or I know that I share.

There is the present. In the present there is this reality, global pandemic, that for decades, decades, has been predicted clearly, plainly, and loudly by highly competent and credible people. Will we humans learn from this? There will, after all, be another one. 

There are other threats, so it is said. They can all be prepared for, or at least mitigated in their impact. The chance of an inadvertent nuclear exchange can be lessened if the people who can do so would pull back even a bit from their readiness for intentional insanity. Or so I hear (via Economist podcast). Some put at 50/50 in this decade the chance of solar activity that would down satellites, and fry world-wide communications and power, maybe for years. Maybe forever. Even with that, it is said, there are things that can be done to lessen the impact (though it will still be horrible).

There is, however, little will to do anything about “low probability, high impact” events, even when the probability isn’t really low, and even when the cost of doing something now is relatively cheap.

There is this human thing, isn’t there. We will ignore or deny facts until the last possible instant, and maybe not then. Instead, deny, blame, make excuses. And everyone around the denial goes down with the denier.

That podcast I referenced made mention of three simple steps we can encourage (which really might mean instilling some courage) our leaders to do to help be prepared for disaster. First scan for present and potential danger. Second, develop a plan. Third (it has to be said), have the will to enact the plan.

Those, it seems to me, are good steps for all of us when it comes to work, the organizations we are part of, family and personal matters. Scan and plan. I say this as one who knows too well the impact of my own failures in such things.

We can lift one another in such realities as, or before, they arise, with a “You can do this” kind of genuine en-couragement.

Movie Theatre as Prism

Apparently Cineplex is looking to reopen as early as July of this year, if, when, and where it may be allowed to do so. Seems they plan to march on after an apparently failed takeover deal, and have measures planned to make visiting their venues safe, including reserved seating.

I don’t suppose there is anything they will do to prevent there being some person a couple of rows ahead who insists on looking at their phone throughout the movie.

Anyway, there is the simple escapism of it, and if you care for films at all there are some you just need to see on the big screen along with the big sound. Sometimes there is even artistic merit, with something to be gained for the mind and heart.

There is always the chance this mode of expression — even seeing the same content as we would experience on a home theatre system — will awaken us to some human connection, insight or beauty we would not otherwise have apprehended. One might look forward to a return of live theater for the same reasons.

If and when it can be done safely, I just might visit a movie theatre again. Truth is always seeking ways to be revealed. 

A Gift to One Another

There is a movement afoot to rename a well-known Toronto street, Dundas, because this particular Mr. Dundas is known to have worked, back in England, to obstruct the abolishment of slavery. It is one of a multitude of instances we are all seeing of the re-assessing of the appropriateness of names attached to streets, monuments, various buildings and places. Good.

We might also take an evaluating look at the practice of naming things after people in the first place. There is, of course, the potential that the person being honoured in this way might turn out not to be quite as honourable as thought, even as another time might judge one to be honourable.  It may even suggest to some that this is how you live on. You become successful and you live on as a street or a shiny building.

Silly? Maybe to you and me, but I wouldn’t discount it. Especially when a long-standing pandemic in this world is a lack of self-worth over against a world of material obsession. Consider the first thing we think of when it is asked what a person’s worth is.

There are thoughtful people who sense that our being is tied to something much bigger than anything our memory could be tied to, that our consciousness is tied to a reality beyond ourselves. More specifically and personally, there are those who live in confidence of a promise that is  more reliable than anything we experience as reality: “I am with you always, to the very end of the age” (Matthew 28:20b).

Each of us has the power that is to be found in its relinquishing–relinquishing power, that is. We live instead by grace, accepting–in contrast to much of the spirit of the world being protested against–that we are a gift to one another, and we live in anticipation, by that grace, of a greater, more enduring community to come.

Yes There Is Hope

Parents and day care operators in Ontario are struggling with permission for day care centres to open again tomorrow (June 12) with all that it takes actually to be ready for that. Also, here in Ontario, the government  has announced plans for postsecondary schools to open in the summer for students, particularly this year’s grads, to complete their school year, schools having closed in March. 

Beyond the logistics involved in these developments, it strikes me there is a common concern between the near end of schooling and care before it even begins: How to have healthy, whole humans, equipped for a world that will very quickly–again and repeatedly–become unrecognizable?

The specific knowledge and skills carefully and thoroughly to be developed need bearing in the special vessel of our acknowledged interdependent humanity.

Signs of hope among some leaders of today: Mayors Keisha Lance Bottoms (Atlanta) and Muriel Bowser (District of Columbia), Prime Ministers Yacinda Ardern (New Zealand) and Mette Frederiksen (Denmark), Dr. Bonnie Henry, Provincial Health Officer for British Columbia, and (take note of the name for future reference) Chika Stacy Oriuwa, 2020 University of Toronto medical school valedictorian. Note that even to this white male retired pastor from an agrarian patriarchal religion, it is women who come to mind.

There is hope in such leadership, and for each of us. I (still) find it expressed: “Do not conform to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind” (Romans 12:2a).

Something New in the How of Things?

There are two very different kinds of alliances revealed in recent times. 

1. Alliance in Support of Power

My impression is that there is one set of alliances at work to support certain interests existing in small towns and the chalets of the ultra powerful. Their core value and raison d’etre: white supremacy. They work through political channels and the workings of familiar social media and unfamiliar (to most of us) dark net sites. And they have prominent hiding-in-plain-sight agents. 

The point: The function of one set of alliances is to promote survival strategies of an elite who believe in and work for a very narrow and ultimately oppressive idea of what it is to be a human being. 

2. Alliance in Support of Principle

There is another alliance we have seen at work–on the streets of the United States, around the world, in big cities and small rural towns. It is a disparate alliance working not for power interests, but for principle. That principle seems to have to do with the equality and dignity of all humanity. And, not to over generalize or principle-ize it, it is focused on the very specific, long-standing, and supported-by-the-powerful, systematic abuse of blacks. It is making headway.

Dare I hope that not only is this specific thing being effectively addressed, but that something new is happening in the how of things? Real change seems to be coming, and it is not through conventional politics and its power-wrangling found everywhere from cabinet rooms and legislatures to too many town and church councils.

It is necessary to remember, however, that the best-intentioned alliances consist of human beings. This is both a strength and a vulnerability. It is essential, therefore, that in this, as in everything, we support the best in one another.

Humanity 101

What does (did, since he was killed) George Floyd of Minneapolis have to do with an Ontario long term care resident left with pressure sores, and/or in an environment of feces and cockroaches, crying out for hours?

What do both of the above have to do with, for that matter, Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls (MMIWG)?

They are viewed and treated as less than human. It is widely recognized that seeing someone or a group of someones as less than human is the first step toward abuse. It could also be a spouse, a child, a homeless person.

“Human” perhaps applies to political party donors, well-connected cronies, or simply people who are “like me” (whatever that might mean). 

It ought to be especially disturbing that those who view some as less than human consider themselves people of faith. Apparently only certain people are made in the image of God.

Confound the Puny-Minded

So no classroom learning in Ontario until at least September. I have to preface whatever I say here with the acknowledgment that I am long past the stage of being part of any homeschooling situation. But I hope something. Even with having the vivid memory of how exasperating, heel of the hand to one’s (own) forehead the experience could be just to ‘encourage’ one’s children through regular homework assignments, I can only try to imagine the ups and downs and more downs of what’s going on in homes these days.

But, like I said already, I can hope something–that there is actually fun happening. And part of that fun would be to experience learning, together, that isn’t just part of the curriculum, as necessary and important as that is. The something I hope has to do with what I’ve heard any good teacher say, that teaching/learning is about learning to learn, loving to learn, everything, insatiably. 

Strangely enough, this hope arose for me in hearing about what is shaping up to be a distinctly unhealthy sort of global competition over the race for, and subsequent distribution of a COVID-19 vaccine. I wonder about the scientists involved in this, more than the people pulling the power strings, whose interest is, well, power. Control. Ownership. The world of nature teaches that collaboration benefits all who collaborate. Competition may make for better figure skaters and iPads, but it’s a lousy approach to genuinely helping one another in a global crisis. 

My guess, since I don’t personally know any scientific geniuses, is that the people that really matter, at the heart of the race for a vaccine (1) have stunningly impressive minds that can focus on one specific task, and (2) have amazingly curious minds with an Olympic-level curiosity about all things, out of which their specialization has emerged. 

But when your interest is power and control, we have seen over and over in the world’s autocrats, you not only do not want to know about some things, you don’t want to know about anything except what helps with your power and control and ownership, and you actively and ruthlessly suppress anyone who dares to ask bigger questions, or offer wider and important knowledge. Scientific facts seem especially to be scorned. 

I very much doubt that anyone who grows up with a wonder-filled curiosity about all things ever gets to that sorry state. 

So, once more, I hope something; that we would trust in the wisdom of the young, and reinforce their curiosity. Just watch. Without losing any of the wonder about all things, they will latch on also to specific paths leading to great discoveries to come. This will emerge in a generation that is unleashed, we would pray, from the control of those who are both powerful and puny-minded.

The Bundle Deal

It is reported that around 1.7 million Canadians work in the gig economy. And it’s growing, especially in the current reality. It is said to be part of a trend, where more and more of us are in temporary, casual, or otherwise unstable jobs (Toronto Star, May 19, 2020).

How can a person be encouraged if drawn into this growing new world? Depression is said to be an increasing problem in the months ahead, as we all struggle with getting to, well, whatever is yet coming–a second coronavirus wave, even more economic and social instability, even chaos?

I find resonating in me the often repeated observation in facebook posts: I will believe what you do more than what you say. But our identity is not any one thing we do, or job that we did not exactly aspire to (or choose, in spite of some tie-dyed 70s style psycho-babble-speak claiming that whatever situation you’re in is what you chose–especially unhelpful for those dealing with abuse). I am tempted to say there is honour in any work, and while I believe that, a person might not emotionally be in a space to hear it.

Instead, I am inclined to foist on this situation an observation or two about what makes you you and me me. First off: it’s not any one thing. Certainly not a job (those who love their jobs need to know this, too, if they are not going to be one-dimensional). Is not each of us a whole bundle of amazing stuff, with a unique personality, certain aptitudes, a heart for some concern or concerns no one else may even know about, and a special set of experiences. The idea here isn’t to make you feel worse about where you’re at (“What am I doing in this?”). It is to see that you and I have so much more going for us that any one thing we do. It all needs to be explored and brought out in some way. It is extremely rare to have a job in which all of this can be explored. In other words, at the risk of being corny, find some way to celebrate the wholeness of your life, the gift that  you are.

And maybe the self-realization will propel you to new things.